Book Review: Vivian Maier, Street Photographer

The term 'Street photography' carries a lot of connotations, and not all of them positive. Of the countless photographers given the label 'street photographer' the worst are opportunists - vultures feeding on the sad, the filthy and the violent. But the best are visual historians, and their work is timeless.

To take just two examples of the latter, Bill Brandt and Henri Cartier-Bresson were street portraitists of the highest order, but they were also absurdists, influenced by the sense of humour, as well as the visual sensibilities of the Surrealists and Cubists who were their contemporaries. Saul Leiter, likewise, took photographs on the street, but he was so much more than 'just' a street photographer, and incorporated the influence of an energetic generation of modern artists in his post-war work.

The same is true of Vivian Maier. Currently enjoying a considerable degree of posthumous fame, little is known about her life. We do know she was a career nanny in Chicago, and we also know that she took hundreds of thousands of photographs over four decades before her death in 2009.

There is much to be fascinated by in Maier’s life and work, but perhaps what I find most interesting is that after spending a long time looking at this book, I can find no steady thread of consistency in her style. The work in 'Street Photographer' is extraordinarily eclectic, and the collective effect is stunning - pulling off the rare trick of combining the stylistic restlessness of the amateur with the steady hand and studied gaze of experience.

Looking through this collection, it's impossible not to be struck by the sheer variety. Here is a surreal detail - a shopkeeper’s feet peeking out from under a window display that could have come straight out of Bill Brandt’s 'The English at Home'. But here is a violent flash-lit shot of a bloodied man being dragged down a street by police, which is pure Weegee. Turn a few more pages and you’ll find an oddly unsettling beach scene, dominated by the prone figure of man either sleeping or dead, around whom sand has blown into tiny dunes.

And then there are Maier’s disturbingly intimate portraits of derelicts - all men - which are reminiscent of the visceral blackness of some of the images in Don McCullin’s post-Vietnam collection 'Homecoming'. Elsewhere though you might recognise the distant, gentlemanly gaze of Cartier-Bresson, and an amused, cock-eyed focus on street-level details - feet, legs, backsides - which recalls Elliot Erwitt. Nothing is captioned; everything is open to interpretation.

Vivian Maier is one of those exceptionally rare things - an artist without a biography. She can’t tell us why she took these photographs, or explain what or who she was influenced by so it’s up to us to decide, if we want to. All we have to go on is the images she left behind.

As such, Maier is a gift to critics, who I have no doubt will busy themselves defining her 'value' and what her work 'means' for quite some time to come. My advice is to find this book in your local bookshop, and spend an hour or so leafing through it. 'Street Photographer' is an exhilarating collection and a welcome reminder that greatness and fame are two very different things.

Comments

As good as her pictures are, I think part of the fascination with her work derives from wish of many photographers who hope to be "discovered" some day. Very unlikely in the digital age...maybe someone will unearth a 32 gb flash disk filled with unknown gem of jpegs, but I doubt it will have anything that is not already in Facebook or flickr....

She is now the photographer to whose talent I most aspire and I will certainly be buying the book.

A fabulous eye and yet she wasn't looking for acknowledgement, but apparently pursued her own interests and enjoyment.

Unfortunately, we are unlikely ever to see her kind again.

If I was to attain even a tenth of her artistic skill, no-one would ever see my work as it would all be on transitory electronic storage and the likelihood of it being of any use when I die, let alone anyone having sufficient curiosity to investigate, is small indeed.

I too admire a great many of the photographs by Vivian Maier taken with her Rolleiflex T. In my opinion, the book has a few strange image choices -- such as a photograph of a lone pigeon, and several others. I viewed Maier's show at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in NYC, and it was quite good -- there were several photos on display that in my opinion could have been substituted for a few in the book. No matter.

About the review by Barney Britton. I thought the opening paragraph labeling other street photographers as opportunists and vultures to reflect poorly on the reviewer. There is no such thing as an image that shouldn't be shot. Those who would tell others what they can and cannot shoot are snobs and worse. :) The final two images in the review are of destitute homeless people -- was not the reviewer aware of how hypocritical this would make his words appear? You have to laugh.

Maier's work is eclectic because she shot in the city on her days off.

My photo club has a presentation of her work. I thought it was brilliant. And the most telling thing is that only small fraction of her photographs have been catalogued and printed. It will take years to fully uncover this remarkable woman.

I preordered this book the day I read about it in American Photographer magazine. I enjoyed every moment that I studied each photograph after the book arrived. I agree with the reviewer except for one point. He stated:

"My advice is to find this book in your local bookshop, and spend an hour or so leafing through it. 'Street Photographer' is an exhilarating collection and a welcome reminder that greatness and fame are two very different things."

Instead of leafing through it in the bookstore, I would recommend buying it and adding it to your library as it is a book that any photography enthusiast will treasure.

go buy it. beautiful photography and an investment that will inspire your photgraphy more than any overrated gadget or f/1.2 prime lens will.it should be noted that she used ONE camera for all her work. which was a Rolleiflex with a fixed standard lens (80mm).

Love the book. Love the back story. Visiting a gallery showing of her work yesterday at the Steven Kasher Gallery on521 West 23 Street, NY NY. I have her book, but there's nothing like seeing 12 x 12 proper printings.

The person that discovered her work was a real estate agent named John Maloof, who was also a president of a historical society. It was bought at a furniture and antique auction.Most of this info is in the book itself. We only received a copy of this book at our studio about a month ago, and I have to say I love it. Really great work. And also the lack of "fame" and being"recognized" gives the work the certain modesty that is so uncommon in this day and age.Also compliments to DPReview for highlighting this book. So much of this website is crowded by long winded naysaying arguments by the users about camera tech, bokeh, image quality and the rest, that it is nice to see some real photography!

I have the book and it is truly remarkable. Not having a dialogue about either the photographs or the photographer make the images more "mysterious" for me. An amateur is one who loves. These photographs show us Vivian's love, even if it is unexplained.

This is certainly street photography. But I wonder if the same ethos would have been applied had she lived out on the prairies somewhere. Maybe not, because she might have found other things to do in her off hours. I guess the point is that we'll never know.

However, I think the reviewer missed some avenues of comparison by tending to emphasize the "street" at the expense of "photography". We need to go back a little farther in history to bring the focus back to the subjects rather than where they happen to have been located. One point of comparison is the work of another woman photographer -- Dorothea Lange. Lange's shooting ethos was based upon three considerations: Hands off...A sense of place...A sense of time.

Application of the genre "Street Photography" to this book is accurate, but incomplete. The "how" is important, but not nearly so much as the "what".

"... my own approach is based upon three considerations. First – hands off ! Whenever I photograph I do not molest or tamper with or arrange. Second – a sense of place. I try to picture as part of its surroundings, as having roots. Third – a sense of time. Whatever I photograph, I try to show as having its position in the past or in the present."

"This benefit of seeing...can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image...the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate."

Odd, on the one hand she couldn't have been super shy to take those shots, yet she didn't seem to recognize the value of her own skill's. Most folks want some type of validation of their work. One would think she would naturally compare her work with our recognized Masters and come to the conclusion that she could "compete." I wonder if the photo magazines of the day could look up to see if she at least subscribed to their publications?

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